


I never knew that I was so harsh (with things I thought I wasn't afraid of)

by ziiek



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 06:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4337639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziiek/pseuds/ziiek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(It's a joke because they both think they know what this is) </p><p>Titles from Honest Affection by Kye Kye</p>
            </blockquote>





	I never knew that I was so harsh (with things I thought I wasn't afraid of)

**Author's Note:**

> An attempt at character analysis. Setting where Jamie and Joan have been having an affair (if you could call it that) for like three years and nobody is comfortable with or honest with themselves about what exactly that means

When Jamie asks her, the thought crosses Joan's mind, for some reason, that she must have been planning this for years. 

Sure, their correspondence had been sporadic even at the best of times and it really shouldn't surprise Joan but _it does_ , and it strikes her in a very visceral way that if Moriarty is anything, she is a very patient woman.

She knew that of course, the psychology and profiling books on Sherlock's shelves had given her lots of neat little tricks, ones that make the smallest of gestures like neon signs in the night saying "she delays gratification with the serenity of a saint," but still, she knew, perhaps without them, perhaps not so explicitly.

Maybe she knew it the first time she had seen her eat at that restaurant, when she was too angry to think about the way Jamie built perfect little bites of salad on her fork, the way she looked at her from under her eyelashes as she slowly chewed and made them both wait. Joan knew it when she and Sherlock came across cases spanning years and years of clever little stock market manipulations and millions of dollars and body counts that were approaching double digits and she would wonder how Moriarty would have done it. She actually felt it the first time when Jamie sat back and just watched Joan, how she felt embarrassingly loud in whatever New York hotel room they had holed up in before she went to Singapore for six months, something she did not find out about until later. Delaying the inevitable end. She didn't need tricks for that.

But even then, she thinks of her so often, for whatever reason, how she looked that morning she had woken up to find her hunched over what she hoped was a real Monet, the stark line of her spine a contrast to the softness of her infinite tiny strokes. How time ceased to exist for awhile except for when she would lean back on her stool to look at the whole picture. Her sleep addled mind thought it was an apt metaphor. The memory always inexplicably brings forth a pang of regret when she thinks about it, maybe because she fell asleep and felt like she had missed some revelation, and it was nothing new, but also maybe it was because when she woke up, the painting remained but Jamie was gone.

"I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that."

She clears her throat, lifts her chin to level her eyes with Jamie from across the limousine. Denying her feels like a formality but she does it anyways. A thing they do. The quiet persistence of the ocean against the shore. 

Jamie tilts her head to look at her and it is almost patronizing.

"Joan." It's probably not calculated, she thinks, the way she says it, like a question and a statement, as if a remark on the scale in which their involvement runs. 

(Which, on the occasion that Joan is being forthright with her self about it, she knows is ever deeper and ill advised, _she knows_ , but living by herself has allowed her the freedom of privacy for one thing and the feeling of being under scrutiny is limited these days. She thinks he knows, maybe he always has. Sherlock has stopped asking her about a lot of things, like the impossible to miss bite marks on her chest she is mortified to discover that she walked around Manhattan with in the mirror. Holes in the conversation they both leave well enough alone. She doesn't know why it hurts so much when he looks at her with those eyes when she leaves, but he never asks her to stay.)

"If you want people to find out it would be easier just to tell them, you know." Joan says with affected amusement, lifts an eyebrow 

(It's a joke because they both think they know what this is)

Jamie suppresses a smile, moves to sit next to her with her legs crossed so that their thighs touch and her toes brush Joan's shin. She angles herself towards her and slides a hand up her leg. Joan has learned to shut off the part of her brain that tells her this is a manipulative tactic.

"Not the kind of painting I would let anyone else look at, darling" she says into her ear and Joan is just a little mad that it works. It always does.

"Oh." 

Jamie drops a kiss on her neck.

"I would start with some studies, sketches-"

"I thought you didn't do original work." She's not sure what she is expecting with that but she already feels like she's losing.

Jamie laughs lightly into her neck.

"Oh I do, and I have _done_ one piece, actually." 

The memory of being in Moriarty's jail and her face being reflected back to her in paint brings up a tangle of feelings, faded but familiar. 

Hands come up to cup her neck. 

"It would be a shame to never have the privilege of painting my muse again."

And there it is. That feeling of premeditation. As if this was her goal the whole time. As if it wasn't ever about laughing as she climaxed or nights spent riding through New York, tipsy on ungodly expensive wine, or reading to each other early in the morning, as if it was never about the about release or relief or God forbid, a type of _love_ , because she loves Jamie, as much as you can love some one you can't know anything about, and she's told her so and she doesn't have to hear it back to know how powerful it is that she loves her too.

Just as swiftly as the thought appears, she allocates it to that dusty corner of her mind that she picks through when she's feeling self indulgent and lonely, when Sherlock is absent and Jamie hasn't called in months where the eyes of the beautiful boys she's inadvertently killed are all staring at her.

Jamie's running her hand over her abdomen and its a distraction and that's fine.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr is @ziiek
> 
> I got the feeling that I have recycled other people's ideas in here and I apologize if so I swear it was unintentional but some of this definitely feels vaguely familiar now that I'm proofreading maybe that's just because I wrote it (???) 
> 
> Thanks for reading yall


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